Criticism can sometimes provoke defensive reactions, particularly when it implicates identities people hold dear. For instance, feminists told they are upholding rape culture might become angry or upset, since the criticism conflicts with an identity that is important to them. These kinds of defensive reactions are a primary focus of this paper. What is it to be defensive in this way, and why do some kinds of criticism, or implied criticism, tend to provoke this kind of response? What are the (...) connections between defensiveness, identity, and active ignorance? What are the social, political, and epistemic consequences of the tendency to defensiveness? Are there ways to improve the situation? (shrink)

I outline a defence of a naive group-level standpoint epistemology. According to this view then under conditions often met in real situations of oppression, it is the majority view on questions of import to those marginalised by oppression that ought to be treated as deference worthy. I further argue that this view is inspired by and coheres well with various doctrines laid out and defended by W.E.B. Du Bois, making this a recognisably Duboisian vision of standpoint epistemology. The central conceptual (...) move is to relate principles of social epistemology under conditions of oppression that were of great interest to Du Bois with the conditions for group accuracy that have been studied by social-choice theorists working on Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, as well as contemporary epistemological work on group polarisation. I argue that once these elements are brought together a surprisingly cogent case for deference to the simple majority view of the marginalised can often be made. (shrink)

I describe respects in which an over-emphasis on the role of consent in sexual ethics gives rise to hermeneutical injustices. Although consent is widely invoked with feminist motivations to combat rape culture, the role to which it is often put, I argue, is often antithetical to its laudable feminist aims. Various influential stereotypes about consent and sex influence the public imagination, interacting to produce and reinforce harmful "inference tickets" that impede public and individual understanding of important positive and negative kinds (...) of sexual interactions. Rather than trying to replace inadequate conceptions of consent with more inflationary ones, feminists should use different language and frameworks to express their critiques and motivate positive cultural change. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to identify the wrong that is done by the hearer to the testifier in all cases of testimonial injustice. I introduce the concept of testimonial injustice, as well as the existing accounts of this characteristic wrong, and I argue that the latter don't work. Then I present my favoured account, which adapts Rachel Fraser's account of the wrong of aesthetic injustice. I argue that this allows us to see that certain putative stock examples of testimonial (...) injustices in fact do not fall under the concept. (shrink)

An intuitive conception of objectivity involves an ideal of neutrality—if we’re to engage in objective inquiry, we must try to sideline our prejudices, values, and politics, lest these factors taint inquiry and unduly influence our results. This intuition underlies various “purist” epistemological frameworks, which grant epistemic significance only to “epistemic factors” like evidence or the truth of a belief. Feminist epistemologists typically condemn purist frameworks as inimical to feminist aims. They argue that purist epistemology is divorced from the ineliminably social (...) and value-laden nature of our epistemic practices, and, moreover, that it abstracts away precisely those features that are needed to explain how power shapes knowledge. As they see it, purist frameworks simply lack the conceptual space needed to ask the right kinds of questions. Thus, they go in for “impurist” frameworks, which grant epistemic significance to “non-epistemic” factors, and so shed the confining constraints of purism. I turn the tables on the impurists—where they have connected purist norms with perniciously disengaged epistemology, I connect impurist norms with a creeping anxiety that is diminishing feminist epistemology’s political possibilities. First, I demonstrate that it’s increasingly common for impurist epistemologists to use moral considerations as a means to bypass the evidence, which betrays a lack of faith that the evidence will bear out feminist commitments. Second, I demonstrate that there is needless pessimism about our capacity to understand, as evidenced by the increasingly widespread idea that privileged social positions place robust limits on what people can know about oppression that they don’t personally experience. In both cases, moral and political considerations are invoked to give the illusion of being socially engaged, while in fact they allow people to give up on the difficult project of figuring things out. An extended case study on rape culture illustrates the stakes of doing inquiry that is only superficially socially engaged; I show that the two anxious traps I’ve identified have prevented contemporary feminist theorists from detecting and rooting out racist distortion in their accounts of rape culture because both traps interfere with a genuinely intersectional approach to feminist theorizing. (shrink)

I draw on work in social epistemology, feminist philosophy, trans philosophy, queer theory, and ethics to rethink what hermeneutical injustices are, who suffers them, and what can be done to prevent them. I identify several problems with Miranda Fricker’s original account of what hermeneutical injustices are and how they arise, and argue for a number of revisions and clarifications in order to solve these problems. One upshot of these revisions is that more people suffer hermeneutical injustices than Fricker’s account acknowledges. (...) I then outline a novel, more materialist sort of strategy for preventing hermeneutical injustices, and argue that the provision of gender-affirming healthcare is one context in which such a strategy ought to be pursued. Finally, I criticize the hermeneutical injustice literature for what I call its implicit commitment to transparency politics. By this I mean its implicit commitment to the view that when it comes to the hermeneutical dimension of people’s lives, the satisfaction of their interests in things about themselves being intelligible is all that matters. I argue that this view is mistaken, not least because it ignores the existence of two other important sorts of distinctly hermeneutical interest. (shrink)

The intersection of religion, culture and gender-based violence (GBV) continues to provoke critical debates in feminist scholarship and activism. Although substantial steps are noticeable in terms of addressing numerous forms of violence against women, religion and culture in the African context continue to promulgate harmful practices. Chika Unigwe’s novel, The Middle Daughter, highlights a world where religion, GBV, social norms, rape myths, silence and agency intersect, shaping women’s lived experiences. Nani, the protagonist, overwhelmed by the loss of her sister and (...) father merely 2 years apart, is lured by a preacher – a wolf in sheep’s clothing – who shoves her into an abusive marriage. Raped but determined to keep the assault under the tongue, Nani further drifts away from her family, friends and community. Imprisoned and battered, yet, Nani’s silent resilience emerges – a quiet but radical strength that defies religio-sociocultural norms. This study is a review of African feminism in eradicating GBV. It discusses how Unigwe’s radical feminist lens unveils the competing female strength and the limits of silence as a form of women’s agency, thereby critiquing the dominant ‘soft’ African feminist approaches.Contribution: This study adopts a radical feminist theory to critique the ‘soft’ African feminisms which fail to serve women facing the intersectional forces of religion, culture and GBV. It argues that feminist activism in Africa has been going on for a lengthy period, yet the double standards embedded in religio-sociocultural beliefs and practices sustain women’s oppression. (shrink)

Our interpretive resources enable us to make sense of, navigate, and communicate about our shared world. These resources not only carve the world up into categories, but also guide how we, individually and collectively, are oriented towards it. In this thesis, I examine how these resources, and the dispositions they guide, may be harmful. A vital kind of interpretive resources are frames, which equip us with unified perspectives on the world. Perspectives are suites of open-ended interpretive (inquisitive, attentional, inferential, evaluative, (...) and affective) dispositions. Frames thereby guide how we interpret, respond to, and navigate the world. I show that these perspectives are epistemically powerful and indispensable. I argue that flawed perspectives, and the distorting frames that produce them, are deeply pernicious and I examine their relationship to oppression. (shrink)